Like other epics, Beowulf is long. It also depicts the heroic deeds of a figure who is human, but still larger than life. Beowulf, like many (but not all) of the classical epics, was not originally composed in written form, but rather passed down in oral form by bards, singers who committed the main points of the story to memory and sang it for small audiences. Like many other epics, notably the Iliad, Beowulf includes long descriptions of the major characters' family lines and histories. The events of the poem, like in many other epics, open in medias res, as Grendel is already ravaging the Danes when the story opens. And like other epics, Beowulf occupies a prominent place in the national lore of the people that produced it.